Tcl Source Code: Artifact [57fbfb01ec]

Artifact 57fbfb01ec27bbfc6e1684778d0e0ac095e0f2855276c442cec0f6eb027ea243:

File changes.md — part of check-in [7cd4c1125d] at 2024-09-17 10:29:49 on branch core-9-0-0-rc — Remove 'known bug' listing for issue that was fixed several months ago (user: dkf size: 4246)

The source code for Tcl is managed by fossil. Tcl developers coordinate all changes to the Tcl source code at

Tcl Source Code

Release Tcl 9.0.0 arises from the check-in with tag core-9-0-0.

Highlighted differences between Tcl 9.0 and Tcl 8.6 are summarized below, with focus on changes important to programmers using the Tcl library and writing Tcl scripts.

64-bit capacity: Data values larger than 2Gb

Internationalization of text

Full Unicode range of codepoints
New encodings: utf-16/utf-32/ucs-2(le|be), CESU-8, etc.
encoding options -profile, -failindex manage encoding of I/O.
msgcat supports custom locale search list
source defaults to -encoding utf-8

Zip filesystems and attached archives.

Unix notifiers available using epoll() or kqueue()

relieves limits on file descriptors imposed by legacy select()

Notable incompatibilities

Unqualified varnames resolved in current namespace, not global.
No --disable-threads build option. Always thread-enabled.
I/O malencoding default response: raise error (-profile strict)
Windows platform needs Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 or later
Ended interpretation of ~ as home directory in pathnames
Removed the "identity" encoding.
Removed the encoding alias "binary" to "iso8859-1".
$::tcl_precision no longer controls string generation of doubles
Removed Tcl 7 legacies: [case], [puts] [read] variant syntaxes
Removed subcommands [trace variable|vdelete|vinfo]
No -eofchar option for channels anymore for writing.
On Windows 10+ (Version 1903 or higher), system encoding is always utf-8.
%b/%d/%o/%x format modifiers (without size modifier) for "format" and "scan" always truncate to 32-bits on all platforms.
%L size modifier for "scan" no longer truncates to 64-bit.
Removed command ::tcl::unsupported::inject.

Incompatibilities in C public interface

Many arguments expanded type from int to Tcl_Size
Ended support for Tcl_ChannelTypeVersion less than 5
Introduced versioning of the Tcl_ObjType struct
Removed macros CONST*: Tcl 9 support means dropping Tcl 8.3 support
Removed routines: > Tcl_Backslash(), Tcl_VA(), Tcl_*MathFunc(), Tcl_MakeSafe(), > Tcl_(Save|Restore|Discard|Free)Result(), Tcl_EvalTokens(), > Tcl_(Get|Set)DefaultEncodingDir(), > Tcl_UniCharN(case)cmp(), Tcl_UniCharCaseMatch()

New commands

array default, array for
chan isbinary
coroinject, coroprobe
clock add weekdays
const, info const*
dict getwithdefault
file tempdir, file home, file tildeexpand
info commandtype
ledit
lpop
lremove
lseq
package files
string insert, string is dict
tcl::process
*::build-info
readFile, writeFile, foreachLine
tcl::idna::*

New command options

clock scan ... -validate ...
info loaded ... ?prefix?
lsearch ... -stride ...
regsub ... -command ...
socket ... -nodelay ... -keepalive ...
vwait controlled by several new options
expr string comparators lt, gt, le, ge

Numbers

0NNN format is no longer octal interpretation. Use 0oNNN.
0dNNNN format to compel decimal interpretation.
NN_NNN_NNN, underscores in numbers for optional readability
Functions: isinf() isnan() isnormal() issubnormal() isunordered()
fpclassify
Function int() no longer truncates to word size

tcl::oo facilities

private variables and methods
class variables and methods
abstract and singleton classes
configurable properties
method -export, method -unexport